My last brew (2013-12-30) is a quadrupel. The recipe is loosely based on a proven Rochefort 8 clone recipe (hence the name: 8 = "acht" in Flemish / "achtig" is used as a suffix to say that something is similar).

The brew went perfect and I had a little over 20 liters of 1084 wort in my fermenter. It has been in primary for about 2 weeks before I raked it to secondary (2014-01-13). The SG was about 1023 so I left it another week in the secondary at 22°C before dropping the temperature very gradually to cellar temperature (which is about 11~13°C at this time of year). Since I left the fermentor in the fridge (without the controller connected) it doesn't suffer from temperature changes too hard (day/night is about 1°C difference).

I will be bottling this in the coming weeks (next week or the week after). I suppose it will need to age for about 4~6 months before I can start drinking it.

Niels

PS: The candy sugar and the candy syrup are from a local brand "Candico". We always have it in the cupboard to put on pancakes or waffles

Hi Niels, I made one last autumn based on the 'famous'ish rochefort 8 clone recipe by herman holtrop, which has been around the internet for years now. i made mine darker, with darker carafa and more dark sugar. it came out fabulous! at least according to me. huge sweet malt at the front, big body, dry finish! I used the D-180 candi syrup from candisyrup.com which you can get from brouwmarkt if you can stand to order from those bastards. forgot to get in the styrian goldings so i used what i had at hand. I carbonated naturally in the keg, and left it there for 2 months before tapping. I used 1 kg of malt extract to avoid a huge mash, so it was really an easy brew day. all colors are in EBC. gonna make this again next year.

cpa4ny wrote:Thanks for sharing Niels - I haven't used T-58 before, but quite interested in it.

Do you feel that it gives a more "Belgian" taste profile than say, S-33?

I used dry yeast because I didn't want to bother making starters for my first few BM brews. I decided on T-58 because it is readily available here and the flavour (spicy/estery) sounded like a good match with the complexity of a quadrupel. Also, T-58 has a better attenuation than S-33 and that is pretty important for a heavy beer. T-58 is also a good bottle conditioning yeast, so I can simple reuse sone T-58 when bottling...

I'm not an expert in comparing yeast flavours, so I can't tell you if the S-33 would be a better choice "Belgian-style-wise"...

Also... the recipe normally calls for Wyeast 1762 or WLP540 as this is the Rochefort yeast. I will be making the same recipe again using revived yeast from a bottle of Rochefort 8 in the future.

dinnerstick wrote:Hi Niels, I made one last autumn based on the 'famous'ish rochefort 8 clone recipe by herman holtrop, which has been around the internet for years now.

Thanks for sharing your version!

I did use that same recipe as a reference too. I don't think I changed it too much, either. Let me have a search and I will include that clone recipe as a reference. I added the clone recipe below for reference.

It's a fine beer, but it is just a bit too sweet for my taste. Also it doesn't have the complexity I wanted. Next time I will replace the T58 with real Rochefort yeast and make sure it attenuates a bit better.

Something else that catched my tongue: the oak flavour is much much more reduced over these months. I will have to do a side-by-side tasting of the "regular" and the oaked version to determine the difference.

All in all it was a tasty beer and it is probably a good recipe to make a split Rochefort, Chimay and Westmalle batch

if it's too sweet you can always add brett.....i made a big rochefort-style beer last month, 25L batch, after fermentation i filled a keg, and added brett bruxellensis to the remaining few liters. can't wait to try them this winter!

dinnerstick wrote:if it's too sweet you can always add brett.....i made a big rochefort-style beer last month, 25L batch, after fermentation i filled a keg, and added brett bruxellensis to the remaining few liters. can't wait to try them this winter!

It's not that sweet, just a tat too sweet for my taste. It doesn't have the sweetness of a Leffe or Kasteelbier Bruin, but I think some extra hop bitterness would be welcome.

Since the batch is bottled for a few months now I'm not going to open them up and add brett But I like the idea.